Cosmic horror stories are those which show human civilization and human understanding of the universe as being very limited, and blissfully unaware of unimaginable forces that lurk just outside of our bubble of awareness. We are like ants, we could get stepped on at any time by something that doesn't even recognize our existence.
Lovecraftian horror isn't about tentacles, it's about forces against which humans are completely powerless. Not forces you can defeat, but forces you can only hope won't notice you or it all ends for you and the entire civilization. The absolutism of it all is the scary part, tentacles and the lack of beauty are just markers, reminders of our insignificance and all that
Oo I love your definition. And I agree that Lovecraftiam is far more than tentacles. I just find that tends to be the popular definition among marketers
Precisely! I like to define cosmic horror as "something which fills you with dread, a feeling of insignificance and mind numbing horror at the same time."
An obvious (to me) example of cosmic horror is Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. A slightly less obvious example would be Stephen King's IT, even though the evil presence is typically very concretely personified, as opposed to unfathomable and ethereal. Among your recommendations, I think I'll try The Fisherman first, the synopsis just really intrigued me.
@@williamerickson520 I have no problem with horror. I have read and watched my fair share of it over the years. The horror parts of IT such as Pennywise murdering and eating children. Hell I can deal with Bev's dad as well. It is the bulling that got to me and that was only because King is able to really bring out the feeling of being a weak kid who is prayed upon by a bigger kid. He capture that cruel world of childhood perfectly.
For me, cosmic horror is all in the experience that is impossible to describe. The threat is so great to all existence that our human brains can’t comprehend it.
@@shawnlinnehan7349 Have you seen the illustrated Lovecraft books by Francois Baranger? There are 2 volumes of At the Mountains of Madness, and they are fantastic.
YES JOHN LANGAN!!!! The Wide Carnivorous Sky & Other Monstrous Geographies is one of my favorite books. Every story in it is chef's kiss. Love love love his writing. I want to (and am going to) read everything by him.
Highly recommend "the willows" by Algernon Blackwood! Short read but one of my, if not my favourite horror book. The plot definitely entails cosmic horror.
Great video!! Of HP Lovecraft’s work, I’d recommend two: The Colour Out of Space and The Dunwich Horror. They’re my favourites anyway and don’t have any of the racism that does mar a lot of his other stories, unless I’m mistaken.
see i started on lovecraft but not call of cthulhu. he is very iconic but the first story i ever read was at athe mountains of madness, and then that was quickly followed by the horror at martins beach - which was written with his wife. i love cosmic horror, its very much my jam so i appreciate this video. so thank you! my recomendations of lovecraft? The colour out of space. the horror at martins beach. at the mountains of madness. the thing on the door step.
Such weird timing. Tip of the hat to Brian Lumley who passed away yesterday. Best known for his Necroscope series, his Titus Crow trilogy was set very much in Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythology. One of my favorite authors.
What you said in the end there could almost be a definition of cosmic horror: "I'm starting to recognize it when I see it, but I find it really hard to describe" 😂
Love Cosmic Horror, honestly it's my favorite genre when it'd done right. Adored The Ballad of Black Tom (Victor LaValle is amazing!) and The Fisherman by John Langan, but my all time favorite cosmic horror author is Laird Barron. The short stories are pretty much the foundation for The Croning (so glad I read the collections in order because I can see how a lot of people wouldn't "get" a lot of the nods in The Croning) The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper is excellent Ch as well.Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer are also wonderfully crafted. The Cipher by Kathe Koja, Appalachian Horror edited by Bo Chappel, Dead Station by Aaron Beardsell, and The Hollows by Daniel Church also firmly belong in (my humble) suggested reading!
@@stephennootens916 I wouldn't be that surprised, it wasn't a super long book, more like a medium sized novella, but I read it on its own. If any of the other stories were that good though that'd be a hell of a good buy!
@@Nixx0912 it's so good, every few months I check their goodreads page to see if there's anything new! Literally only even knew about it because of The Shades of Orange recommending it.
On defining cosmic horror, two quotes from Lovecraft. The opening of “The Call of Cthulhu”: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” In a letter to the editor of Weird Tales magazine: “Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.” By the way, cosmic horror can and does often include as. Among Lovecraft’s own stories, sf looks larger as he gets older. At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Out of Time, The Whisoerer in Darkness, and a bunch of others are all very much sf. Cosmic horror is sometimes called cosmicism to make the connection clearer.
Thanks to Jesse from Jesse on youtube I rescently finished "The Hollows" by Daniel Church, it gets categorised as folk horror but for me it goes much more into cosmic horror territory. Perfect winter read, I really loved it.
My favorite Lovecraft stories are The Colour Out of Space and At The Mountains of Madness. The Colour/Space is probably one of the most haunting and creepy short stories I have ever read. And if you like movies like The Thing or the novel The Terror, you would enjoy Mountains of Madness. Also, I would highly recommend The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. Lovecraft himself considered this story a primary inspiration for much of his work.
A series I devoured full of fun, cosmic horror, flair is The Repairman Jack novels. The author's name escapes me, probably due to devouring the series at the cost of my sanity. Still great books that are quick and fun.
Some Lovecraft recommendations: The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, The Dunwich Horror, From Beyond, The Music of Erich Zann, The Haunter of the Dark and, of course, his two short novels At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
To everyone who feels drawn to Lovecraft, but won't get into him because of his, let's say dispositions, I'd gladly recommend Clark Ashton Smith. He was a contemporary and penpal of Lovecraft and besides adding to the shared cosmic Mythos he wrote gothic tales, dreamy fantasy, science fiction, dying earth stories and mystic poetry. On top of that, he liked to put all those in a blender. And a Californian, so a Good Guy.
i LOVE cosmic horror!! it often feels like such a nebulous concept to truly grasp (even though many people in the comment section have offered wonderful definitions), but i love the bleakness and abstraction it brings. that there might be something out there of which we can barely fathom the existence and to which we don't even register as worthy of consideration. i don't have any recs to offer except for annihilation, the king in yellow & mayyyybe the deep by nick cutter.
Thanks for the video! Haven't really delved much if at all into this genre, but Ada Hoffman rings a bell and the books do sound interesting - I might check her out. And Lovecraft I gotta check out anyway.
I'm not sure it qualifies as Cosmic Horror but it's definitely Lovecraftian, but I love Ruthanna Emrys' books starting with Winter Tide, which are sort of treating the Lovecraft stories as though HPL told them through the same racist lens he saw actual people - the same entities and creatures are real, but largely just alien cultures rather than horrors of unfathomable evil. And although I didn't get past a few books in (mostly because I feel like I need to be sure exactly where I left off before getting the next one), but I also enjoyed Charles Stross' Laundry Files, spy-novels/Lovecraftian mash-up. As it happens, I'm currently in the middle of book 3 of Premee Mohamed's Beneath the Rising trilogy, (but you clearly don't need that recommendation so I'm just seconding yours) and ALSO N.K. Jemisin's The World We Make (book 2 of her Great Cities series which is sort of Lovecraftian urban fantasy maybe?), so a timely video.
Do you consider stories or movies like Alien to be cosmic horror? I'm just wondering about the definition/clarification for myself too. Thx. Good reviews as usual. Really giving us an understanding of what the book is going to cover. Added a few to my list. 🙂
I think its the existential dread of knowing the Cosmos/Universe doesn't care about us. We are but bugs and the universe treats us the same way as we treat insects. People do not deal well when they have to face this fact. Laird Baron is cool modern author whose short stories qualify. Algernon Blackwood might be interesting because he spent some time in Canada and stories like the Wendigo are set in Canada. I really enjoyed a book by Caitlin Keirnan called Red Tree that's a mix of Folk and Cosmic horror.
Lovecraft is been all over the place in the last couple of years. Their is a trilogy with Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft mythos and there is the Shadow of Miskatonic series which takes place at the university during modern times. I am sure there is more but at moment then only other thing I can think of is the Call of Cthulhu done as a picture book for kids. In fact I think there is more than one of those in print.
One book that really surprised me was A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs. It's comprised of 2 novellas and neither would be what I would classify as horror on a grand scale - yet both left me shaken and would be classified as Cosmic Horror. (I would go so far as to rank this almost on the same level as The Fisherman.) Both stories are quite different from each other and I was drawn more towards the second - My Heart Struck Sorrow. Barron is also great but it's taken me somewhat longer to get into his stuff. Anything by Langan, though, is excellent. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness was the first thing I read by him and I honestly had trouble sleeping that night.
Houses under the sea by Cailtín R. Kiernan, Haggopian and other stories by Brian Lumley, and the Croning by Laird Baron along with the fisherman are my non Lovecraft go to suggestions for good cosmic horror.
As for Lovecraft, although I love his short stories, I have always found his longer works to be more satisfying, such as "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" (some very scary moments in that!, as well as "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". While the latter does show a bit of his racist tendencies, if you can look past that it's a rollicking, epic fantasy adventure laced with cosmic horror. My favourite Lovecraft short story though is "The Strange High House in the Mist". The opening paragraph of that story is one of the most beautifully written passages ever, in my opinion.
I recently saw another commenter say that cosmic horror can be so difficult to find quality examples of because of the unique kind of fear they provide. I think they summarised it best when they said 'an ant does not fear humans, because an ant's perception of the world is so limited. When an ant is given the perspective and intelligence of a human however, only to have it ripped away as it returns to its ant form, that is when it will experience fear.' that is cosmic horror, to me. glimpsing something which no human is clearly ready to see, only to be forced back into society that isn't ready for the repercussions of such a discovery. I think Dagon by HPL is a fantastic example of that, though I'm fair from a frequent reader. Thank you for coming to my TED talk anyway, nonsensical rambling over.
Cosmic horror is nihilistic existential dread at its core. Encountering things you can never understand in the universe. Realizing your lack of significance and either having it haunt you or drive you mad. A lot of the genre is tone and the general atmosphere/mood of the story as well. Cosmic horror is more of a sci-fi sub genre than it is a horror genre to me. The mystery of the monoliths in 2001 a space odyssey are technically a cosmic horror element… While movies like The Empty Man directed by David Prior or the Area X book trilogy written by Jeff VanderMeer are whole sale on the nose examples of cosmic horror. A movie like John carpenters The Thing is an example that plays less on the cosmic scope and more on paranoia/claustrophobia/ and dread… The Thing captures the TONE and ATMOSPHERE of cosmic horror for certain. “Lovecraftian” on the other hand tends to generally use a lot of similar themes… cosmic horror being a big one for tone but usually consists of elements like cults, fear of the unknown, great old ones (basically really old alien wizards lol), lots of fishey tentacle stuff like you said, and honestly lots of dabblings of sci fi really 🤷🏻♂️ Love craft feared the unknown more than anything, which probably fed into his racism, but is also why the major “horror” themes in his stories are either space related or tied to the ocean or sea in some way.
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” I think your barrier with cosmic horror is that you’re trying to understand something that by design isn’t supposed to be understood. It’s not about cosmic scale or tentacles, it’s about things we can’t rationalize or explain. Like trying to explain the difference between blue and red to someone who was born blind.
Cosmic horror revolves around the theme that humanity is not treasured, meaningful or at all permanent, nor is anything else in the universe, nor is the universe itself. It shares a lot of dna with existentialism and also with absurdism. Instead of Algernon Blackwood's 'the Willows,' I would point to Lord Dunsany's 'the Gods of Pegana.' Algernon Blackwood elevated nature too much. In additional, Philip K. Dick trafficed in cosmic horror in many of his stories such as 'the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.' Franz Kafka came pretty close in 'the Trial' among other stories, and Jorge Luis Borges does as well with stories like 'the Library of Babel.' Eugene Ionesco's play 'Rhinoceros' is a wackier version of cosmic horror. From the manga world, Go Nagai's work often runs to cosmic horror with the most famous example being 'Devilman.'
The Fisherman was so fantastic. Out of all of these (aside from Lovecraft) I think that one most exemplifies cosmic horror for me. I also just read a book called A season of monstrous conceptions that was also a great novella and an excellent example
I think Lovecrafts own definition, contained in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, is probably the best. By the by, I am not aware of any Lovecraft devotees who consider Horror at Red Hook "classic" Lovecraft. It was written at a low point in his already horrible life. It's told from the POV of a NY policeman of Irish descent in the 1920s. Why you would think that person wouldn't be a racist is beyond me. Lovecraft had just married a Jewish woman himself at that time and was "recovering" from his own racism IMO. I appreciate your admirable attempt at trying to find cosmic horror books for your subscribers even though you are not a devotee yourself. Your picks were pretty good.
Great video. My favorite HPL story is probably The Whisperer in Darkness. I love The Fisherman, Regina, Ring Shout, The Ballad of Black Tom and The Outside. I also enjoyed Beneath the Rising but didn't carry on with the series. I would recommend to others Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country as well as Caitlan Kiernan's The Tinfoil Dossier trilogy of novellas. (Agents of Dreamland, Black Helicopters, and Tindalos Asset). And I can't leave out Hailey Piper's The Worm and His Kings. 🐙📚🎣
A great way to engage with Lovecraft is the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. The hosts, Chad and Chris, are great fun, have a deep understanding of the stories and delve into Lovecraft the person, warts and all. Each episode is about 30 minutes and features commentary from experts and well crafted dramatic readings with talented voice actors. Highly recommend.
Cosmic horror to me is horror where humans and human related activities are completely insignificant in relation to that horror. Humans are so insignificant in relation to it that humans probably can't even comprehend anything about it. For an intro to Lovecraft I recommend Pickman's Model. For one thing, it's a short story so a new reader won't have to invest much time in it. It's written in a way that makes for a relatively quick read. And it touches on most of Lovecraft's typical themes. I think someone new to Lovecraft can judge whether to continue to read his work based on whether they liked Pickman's Model or not.
Cosmic Horror is about elder gods. They are beyond human comprehension . Once you see an elder God you go insane and that old saying there are worse things then death. Usually in cosmic horror there are no happy endings.
Cosmic horror does have an element of science fiction to it. Lovecraft was an avid reader of science journals and lived in the period when astronomy was just getting started. The core idea of cosmic horror is of human insignificance in an indifferent cosmos filled with beings who are so far beyond us as to be utterly incomprehensible and to simply learn of their existence is enough to drive us into madness. These beings are barely ware of our existence and we are powerless against them. It's not about space or the creatures that come from beyond the stars (though these are common motifs). Although they may have elements of cosmic horror, I don't think any of your examples quite qualify, respectfully, although The Fishermen might be the closest. A better Junji Ito example would be Uzumaki. Social commentary and cosmic horror don't mix because they are at cross purposes (one shining exception is Alan Moore's Providence). The whole point of cosmic horror is that human problems (like racism) are absolutely meaningless in a vast and indifferent cosmos. Lovecraft was not interested in the squabbles of the common people, rather saw himself as a bigger picture kind of person. Lovecraft himself was inspired by Robert William Chambers' The King in Yellow. The collection has other tales, but the relevant ones are The Yellow Sign, Repairer of Reputations, The Mask and In the Court of the Dragon. If you haven't already, I recommend checking them out.
Cosmic Horror is unknownable and inevetiable. You don't stop cosmic horror, you can only hope to delay its notice. The creatures in those stories aren't the horrors themselves but creations of those vast being as their awareness brushes against human reality. Cosmic Horror stories are ultimately about Humanities struggles against the unnkownable. Hence a perfect representation of Lovecraft's many phobias. Lovecraft was afraid of what he didn't know know and so he made it "unknowable" to justify his fears and racism.
Cosmic horror is just so unfathomably odd, and maddeningly horrendous. Not to mention grotesquely unfathomable. Oh, and it's pretty unimaginably queer. LOL.... All jokes aside, it's quite bad, to say the least.
Cosmic horror stories are those which show human civilization and human understanding of the universe as being very limited, and blissfully unaware of unimaginable forces that lurk just outside of our bubble of awareness. We are like ants, we could get stepped on at any time by something that doesn't even recognize our existence.
Love that
Very well put.
Cosmic horror also involves characters enduring some an existential crisis based on the unknowable horror they encounter.
Lovecraftian horror isn't about tentacles, it's about forces against which humans are completely powerless. Not forces you can defeat, but forces you can only hope won't notice you or it all ends for you and the entire civilization. The absolutism of it all is the scary part, tentacles and the lack of beauty are just markers, reminders of our insignificance and all that
Oo I love your definition.
And I agree that Lovecraftiam is far more than tentacles. I just find that tends to be the popular definition among marketers
Precisely! I like to define cosmic horror as "something which fills you with dread, a feeling of insignificance and mind numbing horror at the same time."
An obvious (to me) example of cosmic horror is Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. A slightly less obvious example would be Stephen King's IT, even though the evil presence is typically very concretely personified, as opposed to unfathomable and ethereal.
Among your recommendations, I think I'll try The Fisherman first, the synopsis just really intrigued me.
The Fisherman is an excellent read, Highly recommend.
I had to put IT down because the way he showed the kids getting prayed on by the bully just got to me.
I feel lime I missed Annihilation when preparing this video. It just didn't come to mind
@@stephennootens916 Horror is not for the faint of heart or delicate sensibilities. It can (and will) go places that other genres fear to go.
@@williamerickson520 I have no problem with horror. I have read and watched my fair share of it over the years. The horror parts of IT such as Pennywise murdering and eating children. Hell I can deal with Bev's dad as well. It is the bulling that got to me and that was only because King is able to really bring out the feeling of being a weak kid who is prayed upon by a bigger kid. He capture that cruel world of childhood perfectly.
For me, cosmic horror is all in the experience that is impossible to describe. The threat is so great to all existence that our human brains can’t comprehend it.
What an awesome description
As far as HPL goes, I recommend giving At the Mountains of Madness a read.
My favorite Lovecraft.
@@shawnlinnehan7349 Have you seen the illustrated Lovecraft books by Francois Baranger? There are 2 volumes of At the Mountains of Madness, and they are fantastic.
I still need to read that one
Case of Charles Dexter Ward is my go to favorite.
@@williamerickson520 It's definitely one of my favorites too.
YES JOHN LANGAN!!!! The Wide Carnivorous Sky & Other Monstrous Geographies is one of my favorite books. Every story in it is chef's kiss. Love love love his writing. I want to (and am going to) read everything by him.
Highly recommend "the willows" by Algernon Blackwood! Short read but one of my, if not my favourite horror book. The plot definitely entails cosmic horror.
Thanks for the rec
I agree. Willows is an old time classic, frequently anthologized. @@TheShadesofOrange
"The Wendigo" by Blackwood is superb.
@@peterpuleo2904 agreed!!
Great video!! Of HP Lovecraft’s work, I’d recommend two: The Colour Out of Space and The Dunwich Horror. They’re my favourites anyway and don’t have any of the racism that does mar a lot of his other stories, unless I’m mistaken.
see i started on lovecraft but not call of cthulhu. he is very iconic but the first story i ever read was at athe mountains of madness, and then that was quickly followed by the horror at martins beach - which was written with his wife.
i love cosmic horror, its very much my jam so i appreciate this video. so thank you!
my recomendations of lovecraft?
The colour out of space.
the horror at martins beach.
at the mountains of madness.
the thing on the door step.
Thank you for spending the time to do what you do. Really appreciate your reviews.
Oh thanks
Manga: H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness (Gou Tanabe)
Such weird timing. Tip of the hat to Brian Lumley who passed away yesterday. Best known for his Necroscope series, his Titus Crow trilogy was set very much in Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythology. One of my favorite authors.
I saw the news... so sad
James Wan is apparently making a The Call of Cthulhu movie. Excited for that!
Cool!
Heard about that. It looks like he's making Cthulhu into a kaiju so not really excited for that, but I could be impressed anyway.
What you said in the end there could almost be a definition of cosmic horror: "I'm starting to recognize it when I see it, but I find it really hard to describe" 😂
Hahaha yes
Color out of space is neat
Love Cosmic Horror, honestly it's my favorite genre when it'd done right. Adored The Ballad of Black Tom (Victor LaValle is amazing!) and The Fisherman by John Langan, but my all time favorite cosmic horror author is Laird Barron. The short stories are pretty much the foundation for The Croning (so glad I read the collections in order because I can see how a lot of people wouldn't "get" a lot of the nods in The Croning)
The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper is excellent Ch as well.Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer are also wonderfully crafted.
The Cipher by Kathe Koja, Appalachian Horror edited by Bo Chappel, Dead Station by Aaron Beardsell, and The Hollows by Daniel Church also firmly belong in (my humble) suggested reading!
Hello, fellow member of "The Hollows" appreciation group.
Love reading your recs. Thanks!
If I recall right the Balled of Black Tom is sold as part of a collection of stories that retelling of Lobecraft stories.
@@stephennootens916 I wouldn't be that surprised, it wasn't a super long book, more like a medium sized novella, but I read it on its own. If any of the other stories were that good though that'd be a hell of a good buy!
@@Nixx0912 it's so good, every few months I check their goodreads page to see if there's anything new! Literally only even knew about it because of The Shades of Orange recommending it.
On defining cosmic horror, two quotes from Lovecraft. The opening of “The Call of Cthulhu”:
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
In a letter to the editor of Weird Tales magazine:
“Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large.”
By the way, cosmic horror can and does often include as. Among Lovecraft’s own stories, sf looks larger as he gets older. At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow Out of Time, The Whisoerer in Darkness, and a bunch of others are all very much sf. Cosmic horror is sometimes called cosmicism to make the connection clearer.
Thanks to Jesse from Jesse on youtube I rescently finished "The Hollows" by Daniel Church, it gets categorised as folk horror but for me it goes much more into cosmic horror territory. Perfect winter read, I really loved it.
My favorite Lovecraft stories are The Colour Out of Space and At The Mountains of Madness. The Colour/Space is probably one of the most haunting and creepy short stories I have ever read. And if you like movies like The Thing or the novel The Terror, you would enjoy Mountains of Madness.
Also, I would highly recommend The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. Lovecraft himself considered this story a primary inspiration for much of his work.
Appreciate the recs!
A series I devoured full of fun, cosmic horror, flair is The Repairman Jack novels. The author's name escapes me, probably due to devouring the series at the cost of my sanity. Still great books that are quick and fun.
Oh that sounds fun
Some Lovecraft recommendations: The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Shadow Out of Time, The Dunwich Horror, From Beyond, The Music of Erich Zann, The Haunter of the Dark and, of course, his two short novels At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
Thanks for these recs
The Fisherman was an amazing read!! The first book I read in 2023 and it set a HIGH bar.
This is a very timely video for me. My public library's reading challenge for February is Cosmic Horror. And thanks to I know what I want to read now.
Oh how perfect
Thank you Rachel! Have a wonderful day! 📚📚
To everyone who feels drawn to Lovecraft, but won't get into him because of his, let's say dispositions, I'd gladly recommend Clark Ashton Smith. He was a contemporary and penpal of Lovecraft and besides adding to the shared cosmic Mythos he wrote gothic tales, dreamy fantasy, science fiction, dying earth stories and mystic poetry. On top of that, he liked to put all those in a blender. And a Californian, so a Good Guy.
I'll have to look him up
i LOVE cosmic horror!! it often feels like such a nebulous concept to truly grasp (even though many people in the comment section have offered wonderful definitions), but i love the bleakness and abstraction it brings. that there might be something out there of which we can barely fathom the existence and to which we don't even register as worthy of consideration. i don't have any recs to offer except for annihilation, the king in yellow & mayyyybe the deep by nick cutter.
Yes I find it so hard to describe and am so blown away by these articulate descriptions
Thank you for exposing me to this sub genre! I’ll have to give it a try!
I finally found out how to pronounce "Cthulhu". Whoops, already forgot....
Haha I feel you
Thanks for the video! Haven't really delved much if at all into this genre, but Ada Hoffman rings a bell and the books do sound interesting - I might check her out. And Lovecraft I gotta check out anyway.
I'm not sure it qualifies as Cosmic Horror but it's definitely Lovecraftian, but I love Ruthanna Emrys' books starting with Winter Tide, which are sort of treating the Lovecraft stories as though HPL told them through the same racist lens he saw actual people - the same entities and creatures are real, but largely just alien cultures rather than horrors of unfathomable evil. And although I didn't get past a few books in (mostly because I feel like I need to be sure exactly where I left off before getting the next one), but I also enjoyed Charles Stross' Laundry Files, spy-novels/Lovecraftian mash-up.
As it happens, I'm currently in the middle of book 3 of Premee Mohamed's Beneath the Rising trilogy, (but you clearly don't need that recommendation so I'm just seconding yours) and ALSO N.K. Jemisin's The World We Make (book 2 of her Great Cities series which is sort of Lovecraftian urban fantasy maybe?), so a timely video.
Ooo I still need to read the World We Made
Love your recommendations. I’ve been tempted to pick up some Lovecraft. I think you have inspired me to do so.
Do it!
Do you consider stories or movies like Alien to be cosmic horror? I'm just wondering about the definition/clarification for myself too. Thx. Good reviews as usual. Really giving us an understanding of what the book is going to cover. Added a few to my list. 🙂
I don't think Alien is technically cosmic
If you like Call of Cthulu, you might try The Dunwich Horror, which is my personal favorite. Cheers!
I think its the existential dread of knowing the Cosmos/Universe doesn't care about us. We are but bugs and the universe treats us the same way as we treat insects. People do not deal well when they have to face this fact.
Laird Baron is cool modern author whose short stories qualify. Algernon Blackwood might be interesting because he spent some time in Canada and stories like the Wendigo are set in Canada. I really enjoyed a book by Caitlin Keirnan called Red Tree that's a mix of Folk and Cosmic horror.
Lovecraft is been all over the place in the last couple of years. Their is a trilogy with Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft mythos and there is the Shadow of Miskatonic series which takes place at the university during modern times. I am sure there is more but at moment then only other thing I can think of is the Call of Cthulhu done as a picture book for kids. In fact I think there is more than one of those in print.
I wanted to check out that Sherlock series
I think in going to add the Outside and Fisherman to my list. Thanks!
Do it!
Sorry, I’ve got another recommendation. Brian Lumley’s Titus Crow series was a fun cosmic horror series I loved.
I think I needed this video. I've wanted to get into cosmic horror but some of the existential elements have seemed hokey to me. Great video as usual
Sorry that you also struggle with the subgenre
One book that really surprised me was A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs. It's comprised of 2 novellas and neither would be what I would classify as horror on a grand scale - yet both left me shaken and would be classified as Cosmic Horror. (I would go so far as to rank this almost on the same level as The Fisherman.) Both stories are quite different from each other and I was drawn more towards the second - My Heart Struck Sorrow. Barron is also great but it's taken me somewhat longer to get into his stuff. Anything by Langan, though, is excellent. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness was the first thing I read by him and I honestly had trouble sleeping that night.
I'll have to check that out
Lovecraft favorites of mine: The Shadow Over Insmouth, The Color Out of Space, The Dreams In The Witch House, and The Shadow Out of Time.
Love reading your list
I'm with you re: The Fisherman! I really enjoyed the first part. The "historic" part started off interesting. Then it went on, and on, AND ON
Yeah...
Agree .@@TheShadesofOrange
I’m so excited to try out some of these books!!! 🐙
Houses under the sea by Cailtín R. Kiernan, Haggopian and other stories by Brian Lumley, and the Croning by Laird Baron along with the fisherman are my non Lovecraft go to suggestions for good cosmic horror.
Thanks for the recs
As for Lovecraft, although I love his short stories, I have always found his longer works to be more satisfying, such as "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" (some very scary moments in that!, as well as "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". While the latter does show a bit of his racist tendencies, if you can look past that it's a rollicking, epic fantasy adventure laced with cosmic horror. My favourite Lovecraft short story though is "The Strange High House in the Mist". The opening paragraph of that story is one of the most beautifully written passages ever, in my opinion.
Appreciate the Lovecraft recs
I recently saw another commenter say that cosmic horror can be so difficult to find quality examples of because of the unique kind of fear they provide. I think they summarised it best when they said 'an ant does not fear humans, because an ant's perception of the world is so limited. When an ant is given the perspective and intelligence of a human however, only to have it ripped away as it returns to its ant form, that is when it will experience fear.' that is cosmic horror, to me. glimpsing something which no human is clearly ready to see, only to be forced back into society that isn't ready for the repercussions of such a discovery. I think Dagon by HPL is a fantastic example of that, though I'm fair from a frequent reader. Thank you for coming to my TED talk anyway, nonsensical rambling over.
*far from
Honestly I have learned so much from the comments of this video
Cosmic horror is nihilistic existential dread at its core.
Encountering things you can never understand in the universe.
Realizing your lack of significance and either having it haunt you or drive you mad. A lot of the genre is tone and the general atmosphere/mood of the story as well. Cosmic horror is more of a sci-fi sub genre than it is a horror genre to me.
The mystery of the monoliths in 2001 a space odyssey are technically a cosmic horror element…
While movies like The Empty Man directed by David Prior or the Area X book trilogy written by Jeff VanderMeer are whole sale on the nose examples of cosmic horror.
A movie like John carpenters The Thing is an example that plays less on the cosmic scope and more on paranoia/claustrophobia/ and dread… The Thing captures the TONE and ATMOSPHERE of cosmic horror for certain.
“Lovecraftian” on the other hand tends to generally use a lot of similar themes… cosmic horror being a big one for tone but usually consists of elements like cults, fear of the unknown, great old ones (basically really old alien wizards lol), lots of fishey tentacle stuff like you said, and honestly lots of dabblings of sci fi really 🤷🏻♂️
Love craft feared the unknown more than anything, which probably fed into his racism, but is also why the major “horror” themes in his stories are either space related or tied to the ocean or sea in some way.
Love this
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
I think your barrier with cosmic horror is that you’re trying to understand something that by design isn’t supposed to be understood. It’s not about cosmic scale or tentacles, it’s about things we can’t rationalize or explain. Like trying to explain the difference between blue and red to someone who was born blind.
Oh that's so interesting!
Langan is definitely one of my fav Authors.
Revival by Stephen King was so good too
Love myself a good cosmic horror story.
Cosmic horror revolves around the theme that humanity is not treasured, meaningful or at all permanent, nor is anything else in the universe, nor is the universe itself. It shares a lot of dna with existentialism and also with absurdism.
Instead of Algernon Blackwood's 'the Willows,' I would point to Lord Dunsany's 'the Gods of Pegana.' Algernon Blackwood elevated nature too much.
In additional, Philip K. Dick trafficed in cosmic horror in many of his stories such as 'the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.' Franz Kafka came pretty close in 'the Trial' among other stories, and Jorge Luis Borges does as well with stories like 'the Library of Babel.' Eugene Ionesco's play 'Rhinoceros' is a wackier version of cosmic horror. From the manga world, Go Nagai's work often runs to cosmic horror with the most famous example being 'Devilman.'
The Fisherman was so fantastic. Out of all of these (aside from Lovecraft) I think that one most exemplifies cosmic horror for me. I also just read a book called A season of monstrous conceptions that was also a great novella and an excellent example
Oh cool!
I think Lovecrafts own definition, contained in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, is probably the best.
By the by, I am not aware of any Lovecraft devotees who consider Horror at Red Hook "classic" Lovecraft. It was written at a low point in his already horrible life. It's told from the POV of a NY policeman of Irish descent in the 1920s. Why you would think that person wouldn't be a racist is beyond me. Lovecraft had just married a Jewish woman himself at that time and was "recovering" from his own racism IMO.
I appreciate your admirable attempt at trying to find cosmic horror books for your subscribers even though you are not a devotee yourself. Your picks were pretty good.
Thanks. I usually try to stick to subgenres I feel more confident in but I wanted to share my first attempts into these murky waters
I feel that you would like "Red River Seven."
Great video. My favorite HPL story is probably The Whisperer in Darkness. I love The Fisherman, Regina, Ring Shout, The Ballad of Black Tom and The Outside. I also enjoyed Beneath the Rising but didn't carry on with the series. I would recommend to others Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country as well as Caitlan Kiernan's The Tinfoil Dossier trilogy of novellas. (Agents of Dreamland, Black Helicopters, and Tindalos Asset). And I can't leave out Hailey Piper's The Worm and His Kings. 🐙📚🎣
Love reading some of your favs
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch is an incredible cosmic horror SF
A great way to engage with Lovecraft is the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. The hosts, Chad and Chris, are great fun, have a deep understanding of the stories and delve into Lovecraft the person, warts and all. Each episode is about 30 minutes and features commentary from experts and well crafted dramatic readings with talented voice actors. Highly recommend.
Oh thay sounds cool
At the Mountains of Madness great for "the Thing" fan. Great movie also.
Cosmic horror to me is horror where humans and human related activities are completely insignificant in relation to that horror. Humans are so insignificant in relation to it that humans probably can't even comprehend anything about it. For an intro to Lovecraft I recommend Pickman's Model. For one thing, it's a short story so a new reader won't have to invest much time in it. It's written in a way that makes for a relatively quick read. And it touches on most of Lovecraft's typical themes. I think someone new to Lovecraft can judge whether to continue to read his work based on whether they liked Pickman's Model or not.
Love reading your definition
Gunmetal Gods is a good saga. It has some scenes that are a bit too much but is very grim dark and there's a lot of cosmic horror
Oh yes! That's a good one.
Cosmic Horror is about elder gods. They are beyond human comprehension . Once you see an elder God you go insane and that old saying there are worse things then death. Usually in cosmic horror there are no happy endings.
But what exactly is an elder God?
Loved the Fisherman.
the outside is the one that most interests me also has a great cover⚛😀
Such a good one!
Try "A Lush and Seething Hell" by John Jacobs.
Cosmic horror does have an element of science fiction to it. Lovecraft was an avid reader of science journals and lived in the period when astronomy was just getting started. The core idea of cosmic horror is of human insignificance in an indifferent cosmos filled with beings who are so far beyond us as to be utterly incomprehensible and to simply learn of their existence is enough to drive us into madness. These beings are barely ware of our existence and we are powerless against them. It's not about space or the creatures that come from beyond the stars (though these are common motifs).
Although they may have elements of cosmic horror, I don't think any of your examples quite qualify, respectfully, although The Fishermen might be the closest. A better Junji Ito example would be Uzumaki. Social commentary and cosmic horror don't mix because they are at cross purposes (one shining exception is Alan Moore's Providence). The whole point of cosmic horror is that human problems (like racism) are absolutely meaningless in a vast and indifferent cosmos. Lovecraft was not interested in the squabbles of the common people, rather saw himself as a bigger picture kind of person.
Lovecraft himself was inspired by Robert William Chambers' The King in Yellow. The collection has other tales, but the relevant ones are The Yellow Sign, Repairer of Reputations, The Mask and In the Court of the Dragon. If you haven't already, I recommend checking them out.
Appreciate you weighing in. I definitely don't consider myself an expert on this genre
I love the idea of science gone wrong so beneath the rising is a sure pick for me.
Yeah I'm a sucker for that
In my opinion, Cosmic Horror depicts extreme nihilism in the face of threats posed to humanity by ambivalent forces greater than us.
Fisherman is one I want to read.
"The Fisherman" had a good beginning, and ending, but in the middle I found it to be tedious and slow going. Just my opinion.
Yeah I felt similar
Is blindsight considered cosmic horror?
I wouldn't think so but others can chime in if I'm wrong
I don't know, but I consider it to be a cosmic bore !
Cosmic Horror is unknownable and inevetiable. You don't stop cosmic horror, you can only hope to delay its notice. The creatures in those stories aren't the horrors themselves but creations of those vast being as their awareness brushes against human reality. Cosmic Horror stories are ultimately about Humanities struggles against the unnkownable. Hence a perfect representation of Lovecraft's many phobias. Lovecraft was afraid of what he didn't know know and so he made it "unknowable" to justify his fears and racism.
What an awesome description
Greig Beck writes great horror.
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Cosmic horror has nothing to do with evil.
Hello there hey there 😊😊
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Loved yhe video!
You are beautiful ❤
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Good list. Cosmic horror isn't my favorite either
Cosmic horror is just so unfathomably odd, and maddeningly horrendous. Not to mention grotesquely unfathomable. Oh, and it's pretty unimaginably queer. LOL.... All jokes aside, it's quite bad, to say the least.
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